Super Supportive

141

******

Alden shifted Zeridee on his back and peered out of the gaping hole in the front wall of Apogee Artist Spaces.

Liam had just made it to the intersection. The man’s chest was wrapped in white light; he’d found some kind of flexible, glowing tubing in his studio or the wreckage. And his feet were covered now—one with a shoe, one with something Alden couldn’t identify from here.

Good luck, he thought as the Brute leaped over what looked like a destroyed refrigerator and disappeared around the corner.

My turn to go.

He wanted a flashlight, but while he’d listened to Liam frantically searching his ruined studio for supplies, he’d decided that it would take too long to find one in this mess. Better to get off this street and to a clearer area first.

The boom rooms had only partially lived up to their names. On this hall that connected directly to the building’s entryway and exterior, most of the rooms were standing, but their doors had been blown inward by the force of the water. All kinds of things had gotten scrambled and smashed. Some of the mess had drifted into the hallway or out of the building altogether when the water retreated. He was guessing most of it had left through the giant gap where the puzzle door and the stretch of concrete wall on one side of it had once been.

There was an entire room missing there, just behind Alden and to his left. Reinforced walls had been turned to rubble, and so much of the ceiling was gone that the second floor was exposed.

He couldn’t help looking back at that area one last time, wondering if he could possibly be correct about how it had happened.

It looks like a torpedo hit the front of the building and burst through there instead of just the big wave.

“Hey,” he said, staring at the thing he suspected of being that torpedo. “You don’t happen to have a package with a flashlight in you, do you?”

A glowing red hand sign appeared, illuminating an odd nook in the rubble as it waved hello. It looked like something largish had been sitting there, supporting the debris as it fell all around it, and then that something had disappeared.

Now, there was a single Post Drop in the precise center of that space, standing upright.

Alden wasn’t sure it was fair of him to be suspicious of the Drop. The mailbox wasn’t totally unharmed. Its solar panel top was broken from where a broken pipe had hit it. The screen that was displaying the hand was shattered. And some rubble around it ruined the perfection of the strange pocket it sat in.

But the pocket was still there. It looked like it could have been created by a water bubble that had surrounded the Post Drop and launched it into Apogee. And the mailbox was in unexpectedly fantastic shape if it was a regular victim of a massive wave.

The glowing hand turned into a smiley face.

“I’m sorry, customer. I don’t recognize you. My connection to System information seems to be malfunctioning. Please input your name on the touchscreen if you’d like to send mail.”

“Where did you come from?” Alden asked it, thinking that he might at least get the name of a location. He’d know to avoid going that way as he traveled, since missing mailboxes didn’t bode well for the conditions there.

But there must not have been a programmed response for that question. The device said “I’m sorry, customer,” again in that same tonelessly polite voice. Much more boring than the one Alden remembered from the Post Drop he’d used to send his message to the Velras.

That feels like it was years ago.

Before he left home. Before he was a Rabbit. Somewhere on the other side of that chasm in his life.

He took a deep breath. “All right, Zeridee. Let’s go for a walk.”

He stepped out of the building onto what had once been a pristine sidewalk, but before he could go any farther, a motion a few feet ahead caught his eye.

Then the light of the mailbox winked out, and he couldn’t see clearly enough to make out the source of the motion anymore.

“Post Drop.”

The red light came back on behind him.

“I’m sorry, customer. I don’t recogni—”

Alden ignored it. He took another step, debris crunching beneath his feet, and looked down. There was a small snake, curled up on top of a piece of fiberboard beside a plastic bento box decorated with cherry blossoms.

The animal wasn’t moving now, but it was still in one piece.

“You got washed all the way out here? That must have been a cold, scary swim.”

Liam’s snake was pencil thin and even though Alden couldn’t make out the color right now, he knew from seeing it in its habitat earlier that its patterned skin was primarily dark orange.

“I hear you’re friendly. But are you deadly?”

He glanced at the bento. It had a lid.

Practically fate then.

Alden groaned like an old man as he bent down with Zeridee’s weight on his back.

The bento had a pair of chopsticks clipped to the inside of the lid.

“I’m neutral on snakes,” he said, slipping the sticks under the creature. “I’m not neutral on being bitten by venomous ones. So please forgive me for poking you with these things and trapping you in a lunchbox instead of carrying you around on my nice warm body.”

The snake was really sluggish. From the temperature and exhaustion, Alden assumed. It barely twitched as he scooped it into its new carrying case.

“Sorry.” He shut the lid on the snake and tucking the bento into his bag. “The ride might be bumpy, but I think your chances are better with me than out here in the street. If you live, you’ll be my easiest ever rescue. So please do that.”

He closed the flap on the bag and looked around him. The swift movement of the water out of this area seemed to have carried the worst of the debris away from this particular spot, but there was some unfathomable shit going on anyway.

Something that Alden could only guess was a steel industrial vat was on its side in the road right in front of him, and a mound of detritus had piled up behind it. He could barely pick out what any of it was.

Whole houses are missing. That vat is big enough for cars to disappear inside it. This is all too big to deal with mentally, never mind physically.

From the sixth floor, he’d marked the general area he wanted to head toward. He was going to get out of this demolition zone and then try to dodge the places where the absence of lights indicated some other picturesque corner of Apex had been ground into suburban paste.

He patted Zeridee’s braid and the bag.

Finding the snake had made him feel a little better. Like it was proof that he would survive, too. He didn’t care if it made sense or not.

“Let’s all live then,” he said. “How does that sound?”

******

******

Well, this looks different than it did earlier today, doesn’t it?

Lute Velra stood on his toes and craned his neck to examine the crowd in the MPE gymnasium.

The facility the students in the high school’s hero program used was huge, as spaces for Avowed talent training and athletics tended to be. Lots of superhumans needed room for their powers to shine, and there was plenty of that here. Usually.

Right now, Lute was wondering if they were going to have to start stacking students on top of each other to fit them all in. Like in Emilija’s photo.

The image the F-rank Rabbit had taken of the human stackers outside the casino was the last bit of internet access Lute had enjoyed. And that had been over an hour ago. He’d been slow arriving here at his designated evac location because people who recognized him had kept stopping him to ask him for wordchains, and once he’d realized there was a significant problem on that front, he’d been trying to correct it.

Only to fail hard.

They’re all going to think I’m a greedy Velra who won’t share even in a crisis. That’s what everyone is going to think no matter what I say.

The truth wasn’t much better, and his reputation could hardly sink lower. So in that sense he supposed it was fine.

People bumped into him. He was still standing in the doorway that separated the building’s front vestibule from the gym itself, and the crowd was so thick that he basically couldn’t move until everyone else did.

Lute was being careful about how he moved.

He’d stacked quite a few wordchains on himself, since he could still do that just fine, and he wasn’t accustomed to carrying this many at once.

Hazel got her jollies by turning herself into a faux Brute. His own preferred daily chain list was more moderate.

He didn’t think he’d gone overboard yet, but his body still felt like an ill-fitted suit.

Self-mastery chains—two of them—were keeping it all manageable.

He heard someone mention the Teleportation Complex, and he focused on the other boy’s voice, tuning out the rest of the clamor.

“…got in touch with Mom finally on Bilal’s infogear watch. Took forever. Anyway, she’s night shift, and she said they had her chipping ice off the magic symbols. Some side effect from heavy use. You’d think it would be heat if it was anything, wouldn’t you? She said the System was dropping hundreds of kids at once in the concourse, not even bothering with bays. It made them clear all the furniture out. She said the kids were there and gone so fast that she heard one batch yelling and crying, and when she turned around it was just voices echoing around the place. The kids were already gone on to who knows where.”

Lute couldn’t see the speaker through the crowd.

There was a pause, then the boy added, “It was kind of scary. She said the tiles on the concourse floor were starting to crack in places. She pried up a piece because she thought she saw something strange, and there are symbols under there, too. Just like in the bays. She asked one of the security people who’s worked there forever what that was about, and he said the whole building is actually a teleporter. The bays are just more refined or something.”

“That’s not scary,” said a girl. “It’s cool. I didn’t know that.”

“I wasn’t done. The security man told her that the Artonans who come to do maintenance don’t just work on the building. They always check the lots and the parking garage and part of the streets around the place. When he first started working there, he asked them why the full teleportation area was so big, and one of them actually answered him.”

“What did they say?”

“That the whole thing would only be used ‘if Anesidora was no longer a suitable place to live.’”

Lute shivered.

This is what I get for eavesdropping, he thought. Nightmare fuel.

But in one way, it made him feel better. The System was mass teleporting people. With that plus shelters being available, his parents were probably already somewhere safe, or they would be very soon.

Mom might not even have needed a teleport. She’s almost always with Aulia.

If nothing else, Aulia was powerful.

And they could be living at the penthouse right now. They’d be totally safe there.

As the throng of people finally pushed its way into the gym proper, a local interface message appeared:

[This is a secure location. Do not leave.]

“Okay then,” Lute muttered. “I will not leave. Easy enough.”

The noise level was ridiculous. A few people crying. More people laughing and joking around with their friends. There were around thirty young children in a group on the white floor, singing Donguri Korokoro with the grown-ups who were watching them.

“Kids center floor! Kids center floor! Háizimen…”

Lute tuned out the people shouting instructions for non-Avowed. But a couple of minutes later, a young woman wearing a bright red vest over her t-shirt forced her way through the crowd toward him.

“Hi!” she said brightly. “Are you looking for your family? I’ll find them for you if you want to go ahead to the floor with the other minors.”

“I’m an S-rank.”

She looked confused for a second, then she gasped, “You’re the Velra boy!”

Lute bit back a sigh. “That’s me.”

Please don’t ask me for a wordchain right now.

“I’m so sorry!”

“It’s fine.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“It’s nothing. I’m only fifteen.”

“But I should have recognized you! I see you all the time.You look different without your…we both have a class in Mele Center around the same time. I’m taking throat singing!”

She didn’t recognize me without an eye patch, Lute thought.

He’d been too flustered on his way out of the room to worry about something like that.

“Anyway, the whole place is supposed to be safe,” she said, “but they told us to put more vulnerable people in the center of the gym floor, and less vulnerable people around the edges. If you want, you can even go sit in the side halls and classrooms. There’s more room there. For now. Doesn’t look like it’s going to last. The uni combat facility is filling up fast, too. Don’t leave the building or you might not get back in.”

A little room to breathe sounded good, even if it wasn’t guaranteed to last.

I wonder if I should just have stayed in my room.

The Celena North campus wasn’t very close to the coast. He couldn’t imagine the ocean reaching them here unless the whole country was screwed.

Lute made his way slowly through the crowd and eventually reached one of the side halls. He could actually walk in here. The classrooms were open, but all the desks were full. He didn’t feel like sitting down anyway, so he wandered for a bit, poking his head inside of rooms to see what footage of the disaster was playing on the projection screens and listening in on peoples’ conversations.

“I swear on my skill, that’s what they said. The old Nilama high-rise was completely underwater for a while.”

Lute wondered briefly if Paragon Academy was still there. Then he frowned. That high-rise is where Lexi’s family lives.

He assumed most of the newest first year hero class, including his roommates, had gotten stuck at Rosa Grove when everything went wrong.

“If that place was underwater, the whole family neighborhood would be. That’s just not possible,” someone said.

“No. Re-read the System update. ‘Observed effects include: forced submersion—usually but not always of elementally defined objects, rapid motion of submerged materials, sudden influxes of water in limited coastal areas.’”

“What are you saying?”

“A building is an object. It would be like what happened to The Span.”

A girl’s voice chimed in. “I just talked to someone in the bathroom who was there. She only just made it back to campus.”

“In Nilama?”

“At The Span!”

Lute stepped aside to let a group of older teens enter the room where the discussion was taking place. A moment later, his ears picked up on another conversation happening behind him.

“You’ll let me know if they reply back, won’t you, Vandy?”

“Of course I will. Just don’t leave the building. We need to keep track of everyone.”

“I’m after Heloísa.”

“No, Sanjay. You’re after Olive. She put herself on the list before you did. It won’t be long.”

Lute turned. He could only make out a slice of Vandy Carisson’s face and torso, thanks to the gaggle of people standing around her as she sat with her back to the wall.

He moved closer, trying to see around the backside of an appallingly lazy guitarist he knew from a shared class.

Vandy had claimed one of the only outlets on the hallway, and she’d plugged in one of those power strips that was made for infogear. Three of the latest model phones were linked to it by their tiny chargethreads, and all of them were currently being held by people who were texting on them. With one hand, Vandy was passing a fourth phone to that Adjuster girl who could make illusions of herself; with the other, she was writing in a spiralbound notebook.

“Heloísa, now that you’ve had your turn, would you go ask the instructors and the helpers if they have any messages that should be sent?” she asked an athletic girl who was wearing sneakers with pajama shorts and a hoody. “Since they’re so busy, we can do it for them. Just make sure you get names and enough information.”

Vandy ripped some sheets of paper out of the notebook and passed them over.

“Thanks for the mission!” Heloísa sprang up from her squat on the floor and raced off.

Lute took advantage of the gap left by her absence to slip even closer to Vandy.

Are all the phones hers? Where did she get so much infogear?

She’d never carried the stuff back at Paragon, and he couldn’t imagine why she would suddenly have started once she got her own interface.

Vandy was wearing her gym suit. Lute wondered if it was for safety, or if she’d run out of the dorms in such a hurry that the unitard was more appropriate than whatever she’d had on.

Her brown hair was uncharacteristically unkempt, and strands were escaping from a cloud-shaped barrette to fall around her cheeks as she focused on the chart she’d made inside her notebook. There were a ton of names on it already.

One of the phones chimed, and the boy holding it passed it to her.

Vandy read the message, wrote it down in the notebook beside someone’s name, then passed it back.

Why couldn’t someone else have set up a calling service? Lute wondered.

She wasn’t a person who would refuse to let him use the phone just because she hated him, but he still wished he didn’t have to ask.

“Hi, Vandy.”

Her pen stopped scratching at the notebook. Her eyes met his. “Lute.”

“Are you sharing your phones? Do you mind if I borrow one to see if I have a message?”

Cyril had bought himself an infogear watch months ago, after moving out of the apartment Jessica had provided for him while Lute was growing up. The place was empty now. She had left messages suggesting Lute could have it.

He had never answered them.

When Vandy didn’t reply, Lute added, “Not right now or anything. Put me at the bottom of the list?”

She made him wait an awkwardly long time for an answer. Just as he was growing afraid that she might actually refuse, she nodded. “All right. Stay nearby. I’ll call your name when it’s your turn.”

“Thank you. I appreciate—”

“I’d like a wordchain,” she interrupted. Her voice was matter of fact. Mostly. Lute thought he was probably imagining the edge.

“Right…”

She didn’t mean it in a bartering way. Did she?

“Do you mean I can’t send a text if I don’t…?”

“I’d like to be able to focus better,” Vandy said, still staring at him. “I’m finding it difficult to concentrate on what matters right now. I will, of course, pay back the debt at a later date. And I will give you money. Isn’t that how it usually works?”

Matadero. Her mom. She probably is finding it difficult to concentrate.

“I don’t actually charge people for that kind of arrangement…I’d do it. I really would. But, the thing is…”

He didn’t blush. Blushing was for people who hadn’t spent months learning to control their facial expressions with their self-mastery chain active.

“I can’t actually target people right now,” he confessed. “The System assist is off, and I never learned how to do it without it.”

Because why would I have needed to?

“That’s ridiculous,” the lurking guitarist scoffed before Vandy could reply. “I can still target things. He’s lying.”

Lute actually had no idea what the dude’s Avowed powers were. He also didn’t care.

“Good for you,” he said cooly. “Why don’t you try to target the right notes the next time you play instead of publicly humiliating your instrument? The System is no longer assisting me with targeting. I can’t figure out how to do it without the System’s help. Therefore, I am not currently performing wordchains for other people.”

“Why would the System—?”

“It’s none of your business. I’m talking to Vandy.”

Her brows were drawn together. “Why would the System deny you targeting assistance?” she asked.

Lute groaned. Internally.

Externally, he cultivated a persona of patience and earnest apology.

“You could do so much with your skill to help people tonight,” Vandy said. “I’m surprised you haven’t been called for duty.”

“Well,” said Lute, mentally cursing at his grandmother and his tattoo for not allowing him to fully explain, “it’s a complicated situation.”

Take it up with the Palace of Unbreaking! Chainer is theirs, and they do not want me to get panicky and cast chains on entire buildings full of humans who might bite it or shirk debt.

Not without some form of pre-payment anyway.

The only other explanation he could think of was that it was the System itself that didn’t want to play with Chainers right now.

It wasn’t just targeting that was down. Mass Bestowal was a package that came with other significant System assistance. Some of the old people had trained themselves to do things without its help, but even if Lute had been trying to learn how, he should be a decade or three away from getting there.

“I assume if the crisis continues for long enough, and if the System actually needs me, I’ll be able to do more,” he said, hoping that satisfied Vandy.

They had a staring contest.

She doesn’t look very satisfied.

“If you can’t do it, then—”

“I will try for you. I tried for some other people tonight.”

“—then it’s okay,” Vandy finished.

Oh. She wasn’t going to refuse after all.

Lute watched her write his name on the chart. There was an odd feeling in his gut.

Is your mom all right, Vandy? Do you know?

He didn’t think he was allowed to ask her that.

“I’ll try,” he said. “Mental focus? There’s one I like for that. I call it ‘zone in’ because the real name is such a pain…never mind…just a minute.”

He pressed his hands together, crossing just the ring fingers over each other in the first sign. The wordchain was one he knew well enough to cast without too much thought, so he tried to think about targeting while he whispered the words.

For all the good it’ll do. He’d tried on more than a dozen people already. More than once on most of them.

What in Apex was targeting anyway?

It was a brain button Lute could click on his interface. He had learned to do that mentally.

It was a word he could say. Or pointing with a finger. It was Hey, System, help me aim at Vandy Carisson.

When the System was ignoring you, there was none of that.

So what was there to do other than…stare really, really hard at Vandy who is staring really, really hard at me and think about pointing my magic and my soul and the attention of a wordchain at her.

Go get her, chain. Ignore me!

I am a mighty Chainer, and I command you!

Lute had made one interesting discovery because of this situation. The wordchains didn’t seem to affect him when he was trying very hard to give them to another person this way. He’d accidentally hit himself with a single energy chain he hadn’t wanted, but other than that, they’d just failed.

This one was going to fail, too.

I feel bad. Chainer could actually be impressive at a time like this, but it’s just not going to be.

Vandy was still looking at him. She’d always had striking eyes. He’d thought she was pretty that day she’d made him hand over the dice to Carlotta. He still thought she was pretty now.

What an annoyance.

Finding someone hot when you had mixed feelings—heavily leaning toward bitter and embarrassed—about how they’d treated you for years and how you’d treated them in return, was stupid.

Being a teenager was stupid.

That stray draft that blew some of Vandy’s hair toward her mouth, making her tuck it behind her ear again as she moistened her lips with her tongue was extra stupid.

Lute finished the chain.

Sorry, Vandy. I tried my—

“You did it after all,” said Vandy. “Thank you. That’s better. I’m sure I’ll be much more efficient now.”

“Did it work?” he asked in surprise.

“Yes,” she said, already focused on adding a new column to her chart. “Although the System didn’t ask for my permission or inform me about what wordchain you were casting. Isn’t it supposed to?”

That’s…very interesting.

“It usually does.”

She nodded. “It’s good that it worked. You should consider what you might have done differently this time from your previous attempts. You’re very powerful, Lute. You have a responsibility to take things seriously.”

He stiffened, then his muscles loosened up a second later thanks to the self-mastery.

I wanted the horny killed, and she did it just like that. Remarkable.

“You do always want everything to be taken seriously, don’t you?” he said. “All right. Glad it worked for you. Say something when it’s my turn to use a phone. I’ll hear you.”

He strode off, trying to look unbothered. Probably succeeding.

She’s just doing her version of the right thing, like always. It’s good that she doesn’t realize she made you cry the last time she suggested you might take being an Avowed seriously.

Her mom’s on Matadero. Give her break.

The mood fell away from him as he walked down the hall. It was the wrong time to be hung up on such a small thing. Something had gone seriously wrong. The System was issuing disaster alerts.

It was impossible to feel personally endangered when he was surrounded by bright lights, instructors, and hundreds of teenagers—many of whom were more excited and intrigued by the drama of what was happening than frightened. But there were still some quiet, worried faces around him. And every time Lute saw one it made him feel the knot in his own chest more acutely.

He didn’t think anything bad could’ve happened to his parents. Not really. Evacuations were happening all over Apex and F-City. The System was helping. Adult Avowed were helping. Most of the hero program faculty and Principal Juma from Sciences were out there right now. There were hyperboles on duty. There were wizards.

It’s fine, right?

He’d feel a lot better after he’d used the phone.

Mom can probably get her hands on infogear, too. Even on a night like tonight. She’s good at things like that.

He found a patch of wall to lean against and tried to figure out how he’d targeted Vandy Carisson. Is it because she’s an S, too? I don’t think that should make a difference, but maybe it could.

Beside him, two girls were having a conversation about how the tips of the Apex crescent were being completely emptied of people.

“My Grandpa has a house in Punta de la Luna,” said a girl.

“That place is so nice. They have big yards. And the boardwalk,” her friend replied.

“Dad said Grandpa called him from the train, fiery mad that some speedster had told him he had to leave. He said they were just going to let the whole place go to the fish, and what did that say about the fighting spirit of Avowed?”

“Is your grandpa a superhero?”

“No. He’s a Morph actor. Have you ever seen Love Across Dimensions? He plays all the characters. Do you think they should really just let whole neighborhoods go like that, though?”

“Well, it’s a tiny area surrounded by ocean on three sides. I just hope they get everyone out before—”

“Lute,” Vandy said from the other end of the hall, “it’s your turn next.”

He was able to pick out her voice even though she hadn’t spoken that loudly. Surprised and relieved his chance had come so much sooner than he’d expected, he headed back toward her.

When he reached her, she passed him one of the phones. It was warm from being held in so many hands.

“The screens on these new models automatically recognize you once you give them permission to id you as the current user, and any messages you’ve received will appear in the inbox. You get to hold it for three minutes and send as many messages as you can in that time.”

Challenge accepted, thought Lute, the fingers of his right hand already flickering over the device’s keypad.

The inbox was showing up as empty. He hated that. He’d really thought one of them would have gotten their hands on a phone by now, but maybe they were in the same situation as him, stuck waiting in line for someone at a shelter to share.

“When you get done, it’s best if you tell the phone it can deliver your messages to me for the night,” said Vandy. “That way any that have come in will pop up automatically whenever I hold it, and I’ll send a runner to find you as soon as I get one for you. Otherwise you’ll have to wait for another turn to check the phone yourself.”

“Okay. I’ll give permission. I actually thought it would take much longer for my turn to come, though,” he said, finishing addressing a general “alive and well” message to his parents and, for good measure, Aimi. “You have so many names on the chart. You’re moving through them really fast.”

Vandy glanced up at him and then back down. “No. We’re already behind schedule. You were just on a shorter list because I assumed you were trying to get in touch with your parents.”

Lute sent a message to a couple of people his dad sometimes hung out with, asking if they’d seen him tonight. Then he started one to Aunt Hikari.

She was so responsible that she’d definitely answer if she happened to see it.

Next I’ll do Roman. He likes to gossip so he might know things

And then I’ll send something to the guys.

What Vandy had said suddenly registered, but he didn’t want to waste his time with the phone to ask questions. Just as his three minutes were approaching their end, the device pinged, and Lute’s thumb shot down to accept the message.

Oh. Haoyu’s just sent me something.

That’s a really long text. Wow.

“Haoyu wrote me a book,” he said. “I can’t read it in the next four seconds.”

“Haoyu texted you?” Vandy looked up. Then down. Then around. “You can have it for one more minute.”

Lute raised an eyebrow. She’s breaking a rule.

He was one hundred percent sure she was doing it for Haoyu, not for him. But he read the message gladly.

They all got off the bridge? Since when were they on the bridge?!

And it doesn’t sound like Alden and Lexi are with him. But he says they’re all safe.

Haoyu had signed the message Foe Cooker.

Clinging to the phone for a bit longer after his extra minute was up was tempting, but Lute passed it back.

“Why was I on a short list?” he asked. “Aren’t most people here trying to get in touch with their parents?”

“Yes,” said Vandy. “But I made a separate section of the chart for people who had more reason to be worried about family members.”

Because they’re not Avowed? I think…that was thoughtful of her.

“They’re probably fine,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “I don’t know exactly where they are, but the System is teleporting people away from dangerous areas, right?”

Everyone on campus had just been told to walk to shelters since they had the high school and uni gyms.

Vandy exchanged a look with Olive, who was sitting beside her, wearing a pink jacket backwards.

Their faces…

“What?” Lute asked.

“The System’s the one in charge of teleporting people,” said Olive. “It’s doing it in an unexpected way. Not like most people are thinking it should. Either it’s in serious emergency control mode or the Artonans are…I guess there’s not a real difference.”

“Are you saying it’s not teleporting everyone out of dangerous areas?”

Vandy set aside her pen. Lute was now officially afraid of whatever she was going to say.

“Its teleportation priority order seems to be based on several different factors according to what we’ve heard and the messages we’ve been receiving. All non-Avowed below the age of twenty definitely received the highest priority.”

“Right,” said Lute. “Like Apex emergency priority.”

Vulnerable people first.

“But after evacuating minors, its second priority seems to be something more like combat force preservation,” said Vandy. “Balanced with consideration for an individual’s immediate risk but not as much as we might expect.”

“We just took a message from someone who said if you reject your teleport, you don’t get another no matter how much trouble you get yourself into,” Olive piped up. “And then you have to consider how the System is teleporting around all of the people who are fighting the ocean and performing in-person rescues.”

“Back up,” said Lute. “What does combat force preservation mean?”

Vandy looked uncomfortable. “It means what it sounds like. But don’t worry. There are tall buildings and shelters all over the place. Any inland skyscraper should be an excellent evacuation spot.”

There is no way, thought Lute, that my parents fall into any category that Vandy Carisson might call a ‘combat force’.

“Almost everyone,” said Vandy, “will be fine.”

******

******

“This is a loooong walk,” Natalie Choir said, trying to hold a small pink umbrella over herself and Hadiza at the same time. “Whew. Okay! I’m sure we are just about to reach Bunker Street. Yay! Stay positive! Hadiza, are your feet all right?”

“They have been better.” Hadiza was looking down at the high heels she’d worn for their Friday night out. “My skill makes them beautiful. Not comfortable.”

“You can take them off soon. Emilija…um…Go, Emilija! Good Emilija! Smiles!”

Emilija sighed. “Go, Natalie,” she said in a heavy accent, twirling her own umbrella a little. “Good Natalie. Smiles.”

Natalie held a hand up for a high five, and Emilija obliged her before turning to Hadiza and giving the Nigerian girl a pained look.

“She thinks you are someone who gets too loud when nervous, Natalie,” Hadiza said. “I can tell by her face.”

“I’m going to learn Lithuanian after this!” Natalie announced. “It’s the obvious thing to do.”

New Sybaris was near the coast. The whole district had cleared out and headed inland when the sirens started. The Rabbit girls had all three been told to head to the same place to seek safety.

“Timer,” said Emilija quietly.

“Mine’s longer now, too,” Hadiza said.

“Mine, too. Again. But I wasn’t going to mention it this time because we are almost there. I can practically smell Bunker Street from here.”

They were in a throng of people waiting to cross a street with a less auspicious name. The traffic had stopped obeying lights in some places, which wasn’t helping when it came to getting around.

“Left,” said Emilija.

The other two looked at her.

“Left?” Hadiza asked.

Emilija pointed left, made a walking motion with two of her fingers, then pointed straight ahead.

“We’ll follow you,” Natalie said. “Lead, lead!”

Emilija set off, and they hurried after her. Not long after, a man walking on the sidewalk behind them suddenly let out a relieved sound, and as they all three turned to look, he disappeared. The black umbrella that had been in his hand hit the ground with a clatter.

Hadiza mumbled something.

Emilija said, “No fair.”

It was what they had started saying every time someone was teleported away to instant safety.

“No fair,” Hadiza agreed.

“No fair. But free umbrella! One for each of us.” Natalie thrust the pink umbrella toward Hadiza and ran over to pick up the one the man had dropped. “This is a big one. Would either of you like it?”

At that moment, their interfaces flared:

[Local Update: Bunker Street shelter at capacity. Head north to Norsehorse Condominiums.]

Natalie bit her lip. “That’s…new. Not bad. Just new instructions.”

Hadiza was glaring at her own notice.

Emilija’s hands were clenched at her sides. “Why?” she whispered.

“It says it’s full,” Natalie said.

“Why?” Emilija demanded, throwing aside her umbrella to stare up at the sky.

“She probably wonders why we were sent to a shelter that would be filled before we reached it,” Hadiza said. “I wonder too.”

“Maybe the System made a mistake?”

“Does it do that?” Hadiza asked. Then her eyes widened. “Emilija? Emilija! Where are you going?”

Emilija had taken off running.

“That isn’t north!” Hadiza called.

She and Natalie chased after their friend down the street, then across it onto another, both of them arguing with her and yelling at her. She yelled back one and two word answers in English that didn’t do enough to explain what the matter was.

Then they started to hear the sounds of the mob.

Emilija slowed down. The others did as well. They passed a sign that said Bunker Street Entry 2, and their own fight was forgotten as they were met with a much more serious one.

“What is this?” Hadiza breathed.

They stood on a one-way lane that intersected Bunker Street. A horde of people, shouting demands and swearing in a dozen languages, stood between them and the entrance to the bunker that the street had been named for. A section of the street itself had lifted like a hatch to reveal a wide ramp that led down below the surface. Men and women with red rings of light over their heads were trying to push the crowd back from the opening. Someone shot a spell at a man who’d scaled the massive hatch from behind, and he fell, bellowing.

Natalie shrieked, then covered her mouth with her hands, backing away.

She bumped into Hadiza, who never even blinked.

[Warning: Hazard in your area. Do not interfere with Avowed on assignment. Avowed on assignment are indicated on your interface.]

“We don’t stay here,” said Hadiza suddenly. She grabbed Emilija by the arm. “Come with us. Let’s go.”

Emilija was gazing at the bunker. Her chest was heaving. Her eyes started to water.

“What’s wrong?” Natalie asked. “Emilija, what’s wrong? We just need to keep walking. We’re getting farther and farther from the coast with every step. It’s all right.”

The older girl said something in Lithuanian, her voice shaking.

Hadiza and Natalie looked at each other.

“Timer,” said Emilija, wiping at her eyes and spinning around to start back the way they’d come.

“Did yours change again?” Hadiza said.

“No timer for me,” said Emilija. “None. It’s gone.”

******

******

Alden was exhausted.

He knew because he’d started stumbling. First over one piece of rubbish he’d misjudged, then another.

The next street will be clear. The next. Keep going, he told himself. You can take the stimulant when you get just a little farther. Don’t want it to wear off.

At least it’s not that LeafSong shit that almost blew up your heart.

Rrorro had literally healed his heart. That was sobering. He usually thought about other things she’d healed because those sessions had happened when he was more coherent and in more pain.

But a heart is a pretty important body part, and mine had to be healed. Let’s not do that again.

His Artonan tablet was in his hand, screen pointed toward his feet. It didn’t actually have a flashlight feature, so he’d set it to play one of Kibby’s saved videos as bright as it could.

“Alden,” she was saying, “when we see each other again, how different will you be?”

It was one of her sweeter messages.

Kibby had many modes—scientist, moralizer, reminiscer, teacher. This particular mode was different, and it didn’t crop up as often in the videos as it had in person, which was a great thing. But Alden still found its reappearance touching.

“For example,” said Kibby, “you might grow even taller than Distinguished Master Ro-den. You might also grow to have different opinions about people. Even people you know very well. Like me. Do you think those two things might happen to you?”

So sneaky Kibby. I will definitely never know which question you actually want answered if you distract me by mentioning me growing even taller than Joe.

“Humans become adults more quickly than Artonans,” she said. “Maybe you are becoming different faster than you realize. I think you should think about it and you should tell me your thoughts.”

My thoughts are that every time you worry about something so silly I have to increase the size of our someday matching tattoos by ten percent.

“I will never have a different opinion about you,” Kibby said. “But that doesn’t mean that you’re the same.”

I think I don’t like how I answered this message. He’d reassured her that he’d never stop liking her and she wouldn’t find his personality that different when they met again, but he’d been less open than he might’ve been if they were face to face. A little too aware of the fact that others might see it. I’ll redo it as soon as I don’t look like hell.

He trudged on until he finally made it to a street that looked normal. Except for the power being out and the place being abandoned.

It had taken forever. As his reward, he gave himself the stimulant. He felt better instantly. Not wonderful, but well enough to keep going.

With his newfound energy and his auriad, he broke into a house that looked like it belonged on the cover of an architectural magazine and ignored the high-pitched screeching of an alarm while he committed burglary.

“I should have done this before I even left Punta de la Luna,” Alden said to Zeridee and the snake while he sat on a bench at the foot of a king sized bed and put on thick socks and a pair of boots. “Hindsight. In the future, we resort to crime faster.”

He stuffed the sandals into his bag in case something happened to the boots.

The people who lived here kept their flashlights in the pantry, which was not one of the first places Alden had looked, but at least once he found them, all of them worked.

I owe them for three flashlights, the socks and shoes, and a cherry cola, he thought when he was done with his quick supply run. And one door.

He’d used his crushing spell on the knob to get inside, and he was carrying the pieces away with him. If the house survived the night, he thought the presence of a perfectly pancaked doorknob would be more suspicious than no doorknobs at all.

As he set out, he marked a new building he wanted to head toward. It had two flashing antennas on the top.

I can do this. It really can’t be that far until I find people. Lots of people.

Humanity, not just isolated daredevils or murderers.

He’d been periodically peeking at the scratchpad Liam had given him, hoping that the man had found his sister and she’d activated the other half. So far there had been nothing.

Ten minutes later, as he was checking a car parked on a curb for keys, the sound of water reached him. Alden lifted the flashlight and spun in circles.

Where is it? And where is it headed?

This street seemed fine.

Just as he was realizing that the source of the noise must be more distant than he’d feared, the flashlight beam illuminated the car, and he stopped, staring at the raindrops on the hood that hadn’t completely dried from the last drizzle.

They were oozing slowly in the direction he wanted to go.

That’s…not great.

I can’t knowingly head toward what’s got to be a growing problem. But I shouldn’t backtrack either.

A sheet of paper—a flyer torn from its home no doubt—fluttered past him. Alden hesitated for a few seconds more, trying to think around his nerves, then he set out at a diagonal, hoping that would take him forward without putting him in harm’s way.

“Zeridee, Tiny Snake, we’re still moving. That’s what counts. Our night has already sucked enough now, and it’s time for it to get better.”

Talking to his passengers was as good a way to stay motivated as any.

The diagonal path he’d set took him back onto streets strewn with evidence that flooding had taken place. The debris grew thicker and thicker, and after a careful examination of some very still water that had collected on the lid of an overturned garbage can, Alden decided it was safe enough to switch back to a more direct route.

Not long after that, in a place where the debris from some large movement of water had been deposited in a huge drift, he found the bodies.

******